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"Be still and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10
In 1974, Father William Meninger, a Trappist monk and retreat
master at St. Josephs Abbey in Spencer, Mass. found a dusty little
book in the abbey library, The Cloud of Unknowing. As he read
it he was delighted to discover that this anonymous 14th century
book presented contemplative meditation as a teachable, spiritual
process enabling the ordinary person to enter and receive a direct
experience of union with God. This form of meditation,
recently known as 'Centering Prayer' (from a text of Thomas Merton)
can be traced from and through the earliest centuries of Christianity.
The Centering Prayer centers one on God. The Cloud was written,
not in Latin but in Middle English - which means that it was intended
primarily for laymen rather than for priests and monks. Father
Meninger saw that it was a simple book on the ultimate subject,
with only 75 brief chapters. He quickly began teaching contemplative
prayer according to The Cloud of Unknowing at the Abbey Retreat
House. One year later his workshop was taken up by his Abbot,
Thomas Keating, and Basil Pennington, both of whom had been looking
for a teachable form of Christian contemplative meditation to
offset the movement of young Catholics toward Eastern meditation
techniques. Ten years later, Abbot Keating, now retired and a
member of Father Meninger's community of St. Benedict's in Colorado,
initiated his highly organized and effective Contemplative Outreach,
Ltd. in order to facilitate a spirituality focused on Centering
Prayer. Like Abbot Keating and Father Basil, Father Meninger takes
a limited time each year from his silent monastic life to travel
the world and teach contemplative prayer. His book, The Loving
Search For God is an effort to bring the message of The Cloud
of Unknowing to men and women of the 21st Century. This workshop
has been videotaped and rendered as television and audio programs
of approximately four and a quarter hours. Father recommends these
recordings as a way to learn more about prayer in general and
in particular how to practice contemplative meditation.
These recordings are available to you via this website's online
store in many formats. You can view portions on your computer
screen right now in the Chapel. Join us? Click here if
you don't see the website menu at left...